Archibunk3r Associates is a video portfolio of an architecture and design bureau based on Mars, in a distant future.
AA are the authors of teleport centers, stadiums, satelites, the Channel of Light, the SofaGuard ™, Hard Disc, the
Multi Purpose Vehicle used in Time for Space, and Tower city, among others.
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“In Archibunk3r Associates, a kind of prototype catalogue from an architecture and design studio from the future,
we find once again Miguel Soares obsession with the artificial environment in which life in technologically developed
societies or in imagined future societies takes place.
A sense of melancholy, to a great extent given by the music, inhabits this images of idealized architecture and objects.
We do not know for sure to what the sense of loss is due to – if to a world extinct, the city as a space of sociability and
the experience of nature as a tangible reality, if to an utopian society based on technological advances as an instrument
of progress and well-being. ”
Miguel Wandschneider in SlowMotion – Miguel Soares, ESTGAD, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

“(…) Miguel Soares is a science fiction artist, someone who makes futuristic works that comment on aspects of contemporary human life.
His Time for Space (2000) is perfect editorial on Portugal’s present moment. Like some futuristic tourism commercial, Soares’ frolicking UFOs call upon us to journey with them to fantastic places where we can finally gain an all-encompassing sense of belonging.
However, we are never made to feel sure what the purpose of belonging is. While the upbeat tone of the work indicates positive possibilities, there is a subtle undercurrent that suggests that we are being invited to some darker cultish or militaristic venture.
Soares’ delicious ambiguity relates back to the reason I felt the title Situation Zero was such an apropriate description of the state of portuguese contemporary artmaking: the possibilities of its future are promising yet unknown.”
René de Guzman, in Situation Zero: Recent Art from Portugal. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. San Francisco. USA, August 2001
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In a society located in a distant future, the promises of happiness are packed with images and sounds of publicity: images of flying saucers flying over seas and crossing the universe are underlined by alienating music and the reading of a text promoting wonderful journeys into unknown worlds.
As one understands at the end of the video, the shift from a feminine voice to a masculine one signals the shift from an travel agency campaign into a military enrolment one.
The illusion of adventure and freedom co-exists with the nightmare of a dictatorial society aimed towards the control of individuals.
Miguel Wandschneider, in SlowMotion – Miguel Soares. exhibition depliant. ESTGAD+Art Attack. Caldas da Rainha. Portugal.